BUSH ORDERS FLIGHTS BY DRUGS TRAFFICKERS TO BE SHOT DOWN

President George Bush is preparing to order the resumption of the
controversial policy of shooting down aircraft suspected of flying
drugs to and from Latin America.

The CIA-run drugs interdiction scheme was suspended last year amid
outcry after Peruvian air force fighter planes shot down a small
aircraft over Peru, killing an American missionary, Veronica Bowers,
and her seven-month-old daughter.

An American surveillance aircraft had helped to track the plane after
its crew wrongly identified the Baptist missionaries as probable drug
smugglers.

New interdiction operations could start over Colombia as soon as final
approval is given by the President, according to US officials quoted
yesterday in The New York Times.

The new scheme, which will be extended to Peru at a later stage, will
be taken out of the hands of the CIA, apparently at the request of its
director, George Tenet, who has insisted that the agency no longer
wants to be associated with the programme. It will be managed instead
by the State Department, with intelligence back-up from the Pentagon.
Information on suspected drug flights would be gathered from
ground-based radar and other sources, officials said.

Carelessness and lack of proper oversight were cited in a State
Department investigation of the Peru incident, although it stopped
short of blaming either the US or Peru for shooting down the plane.

Despite the report, and the outrage provoked by the deaths, the Bush
administration seems intent on putting the policy back into operation
as soon as possible. Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, is reported
to be strongly supportive and planning is advanced.

Surveillance jets used by the CIA have already been upgraded and put
under the control of the State Department. Colombian pilots,
meanwhile, have been given flight interdiction training in the US.
Colombian and Peruvian air force pilots will fly the surveillance
aircraft, rather than contract crews hired by the CIA as in the past.

The main role of the US military will be to provide intelligence for
the so-called interceptor missions. They will be flown by the
Peruvians and Colombians and their pilots will have the final say in
whether to fire on suspected drug smugglers.

The shooting or forcing down of drug aircraft started formally under
the Clinton administration in 1995, to stop the air traffic in raw
cocaine from Peru to Colombia for processing. The Peruvian air force
shot or forced down at least 38 suspected drug traffic aircraft
between 1995 and 2001. By the end of the 1990s most flights had
stopped and traffickers had turned to ground or river transport. But
the flights are believed to have resumed in the past year,
particularly over Colombia.